Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 31

October 21, 2024: Prison Stories: Dorothea Dix

[On October 27th,1994, the U.S. Justice Department announced that the population infederal and state prisons had topped one million for the first time in Americanhistory. To commemorate that sobering and horrifying statistic, one that hasonly gotteninfinitely worse in the thirty years since, this week I’llAmericanStudy prison stories from throughout our history. Leading up to aweekend post highlighting some vital further PrisonStudying reading!]

On the groundbreakingand inspiring activist who changed both prisons and mental health treatment,and from whom we still have a lot to learn.

InMarch 1841, a thirty-nine-year-old teacher and social worker named DorotheaDix visited East Cambridge Jail in Massachusetts. She was there to teach aSunday School class for female prisoners, but what immediately and entirelydrew her attention were the conditions in which all of the inmates—but mostegregiously, to her sensitive perspective, the mentally ill and disabled, whowere held there not because they had necessarily committed a crime but becausethe facility doubled as an asylum, as almost all American prisons in the eradid—were held. Among other things, the facility was entirely unheated and hadbeen kept that way throughout the New England winter; when Dix inquired aboutthis policy, she was told that “the insane do not feel heat or cold” (a frustratingly ubiquitousbelief at the time).

That falsehood represents justthe tip of a very sizeable iceberg of misinformation that constituted the vast,vast majority of public and even medical thinking about the mentally ill in thefirst half of the 19th century. But Dix was not one to acceptconventional or traditional wisdom, no matter how widespread or entrenched itmight be. She took it upon herself to visitvirtually all of the state’s jails and almshouses (the latter a morecharitable but often no more suitable space in which the mentally ill werehoused), talked at length with all those who worked in them as well as (whenshe could) some of those who were housed there, and wrote up incrediblydetailed and thorough notes on the eerily similar conditions she observedthroughout her travels; she turned those notesinto a document for theMassachusetts legislature, and won as a result a significant state outlayof funds to expandthe Worcester State Hospital and make it into a much more appropriate homefor the state’s mentally ill wards.

That successful journey was onlythe beginning of an epic quest that would encompass much of Dix’s remaining forty-odd years oflife; she would eventually travel across every state east of theMississippi and even numerous European nations, visiting facilities constantlyand working tirelessly to improve conditions in those facilities, to advocatefor the opening of better facilities, and, perhaps most significantly, tochange fundamentally the way society viewed these individuals and communities. Dix once wrote,as evidence for why she knew that many can be “raised from these baseconditions,” of a young woman who “was for years ‘a raging maniac’ chained in acage and whipped to control her acts and words. She was helped by a husband andwife who agreed to take care of her in their home and slowly she recovered hersenses.” This woman represents only one individual among the untold millionswho were positively influenced by Dix’s work and perspective, but of courseeven one individual’s live so radically changed for the better is a significantachievement; to contemplate how many people around the world were given theopportunity to go from unheated cages and brutal beatings to sensitive care andtreatment by Dix’s efforts is to truly understand how much one inspiringAmerican can do and transform in a life’s work.

Yet as much goodas Dix’s efforts accomplished, it would do her memory no honor to pretend thatwe have adequately shifted our perception or, most importantly, our social andcommunal treatment of the mentally ill; a late 20th century textlike OneFlew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest highlights (in fictional but not at allinaccurate form) just how far from desirable our mental institutions oftenremain. The definition of insanity, the phrase goes, lies in doing the samething over and over again and expecting different results. Dorothea Dix’sredefinitions are still, it seems, very much needed. Next prison story tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Prison stories or histories (or contemporary contexts) you’dhighlight?

October 19-20, 2024: An AmericanStudier Tribute to the Phone

[75 years ago this week,operator-assisted toll dialing was introduced to make long-distance phone callsmuch easier. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied some classic phone calls inAmerican culture, leading up to this special tribute to what phones mean in myown 21st century life!]

As a sonwho has lived more than 550 miles away from his parents for more than half ofhis life, and as a Dad who has been apart from his sons about half the time forthe last twelve years or so, I’ve long relied on the telephone to help me stayconnected to the people I love most. But in the last few months, I’vesignificantly amplified that need: getting married to the love of my life whohappens to live thousands of miles away at the moment; and moving my older soninto college in a city more than a thousand miles away. Quite simply, if itweren’t for FaceTime and video calls, for voicenotes and texted memes, for allthe ways big and small that I can reach out to these favorite people and theycan reach out to me and we can stay connected despite the thousands of miles inbetween, I would be infinitely unhappier and less whole and less me. I’m wellaware of the challenges and problems that SmartPhones present, but there’sliterally nothing in our 21st century world for which I’m more grateful.

Next seriesstarts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

October 18, 2024: Famous Phone Calls: The 2024 Election

[75 years ago this week,operator-assisted toll dialing was introduced to make long-distance phone callsmuch easier. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy some classic phone calls inAmerican culture, leading up to a special tribute to what phones mean in my own21st century life!]

On howphone calls can symbolize the striking contrast in our 2024 electoral choice.

I haven’twritten much in this space about the2024 campaign, which is fine by me and I imagine fine by you all as well(plenty of that elsewhere, and really everywhere else, if you want it!). I dohave an election-week series on the 1924 campaign coming up in a couple weeks,and will end that series with a weekend post reflecting on the 2024 results,whatever they will be (keeping everything crossed, natch). I know it’s nosecret to any reader of this blog (or anyone who knows me, or anyone who existsin October 2024) what I fervently hope will happen on Tuesday November 5th,and not just for all the obvious and crucial political and contemporary reasons(although duh)—I also still believe, and in fact believe even more fully than Idid when I wrote that 2020 Considering History column now that I’ve learned alot more about her, that KamalaHarris’s heritage and identity make her just as foundationally American as,if not even slightly more tellingly and importantly American than, Barack Obama(whom I’vecalled “the first American President”).

So yeah,the stakes in this election are high, in AmericanStudies terms as in literallyevery other way. And I’d say that phone calls offer a clear and compelling wayto represent one of the most fundamental contrasts at the heart of ourelectoral choice. On the one hand we have the two justifiably infamous phonecalls through which then-President Donald Trump sought to undermine the 2020election (before and after it took place) as well as American democracy andideals, the rule of law, and our relationships with foreign allies among otherthings: his July2019 call to Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky; and his January 2021 call toGeorgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. There are no shortage of momentsto which we can point to make the case that Trump was the worst president inAmerican history (with all due respect toAndrew Johnson), but I don’t think it gets much clearer than thecombination of those two phone calls. Or, to put it another and even moretelling way: Trump embodied and continues to embody the worst of Americanhistory, our most divisive and destructive impulses, the frustrating butinescapable fact that our boastedcivilization is but a thin veener; and these phone calls are exhibits 1 and1A in that case.

On the otherhand we have a famous phone call that came to symbolize the actual results ofthe 2020 election: “Wedid it, Joe!” The contrast in not just content but also and I’d argueespecially tone between that November 2020 call and Trump’s pair is striking,and connects to the ways that this year’s Democratic National Convention inAugust leaned into tonesof hope and joy (in direct and potent contrast to the fearfuland resentful Republican National Convention in July). But it was also justa very meaningful and moving moment for Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, animportant stage in the arc of a definingly American family story, individual life,and political career that are all both literally and figuratively on the ballotthis November. I guess I’m not telling y’all how to vote (although if you’replanning to vote Trump, I really am not sure what you get out of this blog)—butwho on earth would vote for the guy who made those 2019 and 2021 phone callswhen they could vote for the lady who made this 2020 one?!

Tributepost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Famous cultural phones you’d highlight?

October 17, 2024: Famous Phone Calls: “Madam and the Phone Bill”

[75 years ago this week,operator-assisted toll dialing was introduced to make long-distance phone callsmuch easier. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy some classic phone calls inAmerican culture, leading up to a special tribute to what phones mean in my own21st century life!]

On a funnyand fun poetic voice and character, and the layers of meaning she reveals.

Across hisnearly 50 yearswriting and publishing poetry (among other genres), American treasure LangstonHughes went through a number of different stages and series. One of themore unique were the MadamAlberta K. Johnson poems—originally created by Hughes in “Madam andthe Number Runner” (later revised to “Number Writer”),published in the Autumn 1943 issue of ContemporaryPoetry, Johnson would go to serve as the speaker/persona for nearly 20 moreof his poems (all titled in that same “Madam and the” style) over the next fewyears. Johnson was a confident, no-nonsense Harlem matriarch, a womannavigating with humor, resilience, and serious attitude both contemporary anduniversal challenges of economics and survival, gender and relationships, raceand community, and many more. As with almost all of Hughes’ works, the Madampoems are deceptively straightforward, highly readable and engaging but withsignificant layers and depth (of literary elements and cultural/historicalcontexts alike) that reward our close readings.

The onethat I’ve close read the most often, as I teach it in my American Literature IIcourse alongside a couple other Hughes poems, is “Madam and the Phone Bill” (1944).Like most of the Madam poems, this one is presented as part of a dialogue, butwith the reader only getting Johnson’s half of the conversation. In this casethat conversation is with a representative of the “Central” phone company whohas contacted Johnson to make her pay for a long-distance call from herwandering (in both senses) significant other Roscoe. The first stanzaimmediately establishes every aspect of that situation along with Johnson’sunique and witty voice and perspective: “You say I O.K.ed/LONG DISTANCE?/O.K.edit when?/My goodness, Central/That was then!”Effortlessly using poetic elements like rhythm and rhyme, as well astypographical ones like capitalization, italics, and punctuation, Hugheslocates us within his speaker’s voice, in the middle of this phone conversation(or rather argument) in progress, and with an immediate sense of the problemfacing our put-upon heroine. The voice and humor only deepen from there, as inthe poem’s middle stanza (the 5th of 10): “If I ever catchhim,/Lawd, have pity!/Calling me up/From Kansas City.”

But likeall the Madam poems, and as I said all of Hughes’ poems and works period,there’s a lot more to “Phone Bill” than just that fun and funny feel. Certainlythe poem offers a glimpse into Johnson’s fraught negotiation of genderdynamics, such as the contradictions between her desire to maintain her statusas an independent woman and her worries about what “them other girls” mightoffer Roscoe (perhaps especially while he’s hundreds of miles away in KC).Written in the shadow of the recently ended Great Depression (a frequent Hughes topic), thepoem likewise reflects the fraught dynamics of an individual’s conversationswith the corporations who could with a single bill (or instead with anunderstanding waiving of that bill) profoundly change their economicsituations. And I would say that it’s particularly relevant that the bill inquestion is a phone bill—the period’s increasingly ubiquitous telephones, andmore exactly evolving technological possibilities like long-distance calling,symbolized at once greater social and communal connections and yet another wayin which individuals were beholden, to grasping corporations and distant butstill needy significant others alike. Like it or not, Alberta, those are debtswe’re all “gonna pay!”

Lastfamous phone call tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Famous cultural phones you’d highlight?

October 16, 2024: Famous Phone Calls: Phone Songs

[75 years ago this week,operator-assisted toll dialing was introduced to make long-distance phone callsmuch easier. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy some classic phone calls inAmerican culture, leading up to a special tribute to what phones mean in my own21st century life!]

On fivepop songs that call upon this technology.

1)     “Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels)” (1972):One of the more interesting lost elements of telephone technology is the role ofthe switchboard operator, that unseen middle person on whom callersrelied for decades to make their connections. While I believe that role had significantlylessened by the 1970s (I certainly never had to speak to anoperator to make a phone call), both of my first two songs use it in acompelling symbolic way, with Jim Croce’s 1972 ballad featuring a speaker whospills his emotions over a breakup to an apparently quite sympathetic operator.

2)     “Switchboard Susan” (1979):Nick Lowe’s speaker addresses the switchboard operator even more directly andspills some emotions as well, but in a quite different tone than that ofCroce’s ballad. In an attempt to pick up this “greater little operator” withwhose “ringing tone” he “fell in love” immediately, that speaker resorts to aseries of increasingly desperate telephonic double entendres, including(apropros of the week’s inspiration) “When I’m near you girl I get anextension/And I don’t mean Alexander Graham Bell’s invention.” What more isthere to say about that?

3)     “867-5309/Jenny” (1981):As operators faded away, wannabe callers could dial their desired numbersdirectly—but this former teenage dialer can confirm that it’s not always easyto go through with the call. That’s one telephonic lesson of one-hit wonderTommy Tutone’s 1980s smash: with the line “I tried to call you before but Ilose my nerve” he succinctly sums up that painful experience of ending a callmid-dial. But Tutone’s song also illustrates another side to the topic I talkedabout with Scream yesterday—the waythe phone can connect us to strangers. In horror films that’s a threateningproposition, but as “number[s] on the wall” like Jenny’s suggest, it can be anenticing one as well. 

4)     “Standing Outside a Broken Phone Boothwith Money in My Hand” (1996): Sometimes the phone lets us down,though. I’m sure there are other pop songs which also use the distinctive (ifperhaps now outdated) sounds of telephone calls falling to connect, but I don’tknow of any off-hand. And in any case, this Primitive Radio Gods track with oneof the longest titles in pop music history is a true original, in sound andsound effects as well as in lyrics.

5)     “Telephone” (2009):Music videos were of course already a thing in 1996 (and even in 1981), butover the subsequent decades they’ve become more and more fully a genre untothemselves, as illustrated by that hyperlinked short film for Lady Gaga andBeyoncé’s “Telephone.” To be honest, that video is far more interesting than(and quite fully distinct from) the song. But I did want to note that even inour cell phone/smartphone age, the trope of a phone call (answered orunanswered) to represent the highs and lows of a romantic relationship remainsvery much in force in pop music.

Nextfamous phone call tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Famous cultural phones you’d highlight?

October 15, 2024: Famous Phone Calls: The Scream Films

[75 years ago this week,operator-assisted toll dialing was introduced to make long-distance phone callsmuch easier. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy some classic phone calls inAmerican culture, leading up to a special tribute to what phones mean in my own21st century life!]

On onething that’s really changed since the first Scream,and one that hasn’t.

I wroteabout the most important conceit of the Screamseries of horror films, their metatextual commentary on the tropes andtraditions of the horror genre, in this 2020post. I think that element relates closely to the way the films usephones, so I’ll ask you to check out that post and then come on back here forthis related topic.

Welcomeback! One of the many, many many many, horror movie tropes on which Scream (1996) was commenting was theexternal yet intimate threat posed by horror monsters and killers, a threatexemplified by Halloween’s Michael Myers looking into windows but alsocaptured quite nicely by a threatening phone call (whether or not it’s “coming from inside the house!”).There’s a reason, after all, why Scream begins with thesound of a phone ringing followed by a young woman’s screams, before theaudience even sees the specific, threatened young woman (Drew Barrymore) whowill unfortunately answer this call and provide her own screams. But it’spretty telling that that call comes in on a landline, and one without caller IDat that—if Barrymore’s Casey Becker and her family had that technology, and/orif she had a cell phone with caller ID as well, she’d likely not pickup a callfrom a strange number, eliminating the entire premise of the killers toyingwith her over the phone.

Yet evenas the Scream series has evolved intothe smartphone era (with both 2011’s Scream4 and, even more fully, 2022’s Screamand 2023’s Scream VI set in that brave new world), a time when virtuallyeveryone has both a cell phone and the ability to see and screen our calls, ithas apparently maintained this central trope of the killers calling on thephone (I haven’t seen any of those films, so as always I welcome correctionsand comments of all kinds!). I’m sure the filmmakers have found specific waysto explain how these smartphone-era killers are maintaining their anonymity(even in the original Scream there’s anelaborate plotline about a cloned cell phone, for example). Butto my mind, the more important point is that the scary phone call tropeendures, and perhaps has even deepened in the smartphone era—I know for me,almost every time my phone rings these days (unless it’s my kids calling to saygoodnight when they’re with their mom) it feels at best unnerving and at worstpotentially threatening. It doesn’t have to a psycho killer on the other end tomake the phone an external yet intimate and potentially invasive technology, itturns out.

Nextfamous phone calls tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Famous cultural phones you’d highlight?

October 14, 2024: Famous Phone Calls: The Great Gatsby

[75 years ago this week,operator-assisted toll dialing was introduced to make long-distance phone callsmuch easier. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy some classic phone calls inAmerican culture, leading up to a special tribute to what phones mean in my own21st century life!]

On threephone calls that illustrate the classic novel’s thoughtful portrayal of Moderntechnologies.

When youteach a book as often as I have F.Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925),you start to focus on different layers each time. Along with the dialogues withother authors/works like Nella Larsen’s Passingthat I talk about in that hyperlinked post, in my last couple times readingand teaching the novel I’ve thought a lot about just how many early 20thcentury technologies play central roles in its story. That’s especially true ofautomobiles, of course; not only in the book’s climactic events (which I won’tspoil here for the few people who managed not to read Fitzgerald’s novel inhigh school), but in the central presence (geographically as well assymbolically) of Wilson’sgas station and auto repair shop. It’s true of Hollywood film, both inpresences at Gatsby’s parties (andFitzgerald’s career) and in the novel’s underlying themes ofsurface and depth, illusion and reality. But it’s also certainly true of thestill relativelynew technology, particularly when it comes to the idea of every household havingone, that was the telephone.

As we meetthe novel’s main characters in the opening few chapters, Fitzgerald uses acouple key phone calls to present mysterious and ambiguous sides to them. InChapter 1, as Nick Carraway visits the beautiful home of his cousin Daisy andher husband Tom for a dinner party, Tom gets a mysterious phone call; Daisysuspects that it’s his mistress on the other end, but of course can’t know forcertain to whom he’s speaking. In Chapter 3, as Nick attends one of the lavishparties at his neighbor Jay Gatsby’s mansion, Gatsby gets a mysterious call;other partygoers suggest that it’s a criminal business partner of Gatsby’s onthe other end, but of course no one knows for certain to whom he’s speaking.These calls reveal both men as defined by secrets, dynamics that preciselybecause of their ambiguity are a source of intense speculation by those aroundthem. And those secrets can only be maintained in these scenes because of thetechnology of the phone, without which their conversants would have to visit inperson (or write a letter, which of course would be far less immediate).

[SeriousSPOILERS in this paragraph.] At the end of the novel, after all theaforementioned climactic events have unfolded, Nick has his own, quitedifferent phone call. He is trying to organize a funeral for Gatsby (or maybeJames Gatz, since his father who knows him by that name is one of the few whoattends that tragic event), and manages to speak with Gatsby’s elusive businesspartner Meyer Wolfshiem on the phone. In one of the novel’s onlymoments where a character says directly what he’s feeling and thinking, shareswhat seems at least to be the unvarnished truth (even when Gatsby and Nick havetheir heart-to-hearts, it’s always an open question whether Gatsby is tellingthe truth), Wolfshiem confesses to Nick that he can’t possibly be seen at thefuneral, that it would be far too destructive for his reputation andrelationships. This is the side of the telephone that allows us to be morehonest, more ourselves, in its conversations than we might manage to be if hadto face someone and something in the flesh. Just another layer to howFitzgerald’s novel reflects the technologies and contexts of its rapidlyevolving Modernist world.

Nextfamous phone call tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Famous cultural phones you’d highlight?

October 12-13, 2024: Contested Holidays: Columbus/Indigenous Peoples Day

[Ahead ofColumbus/Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I wanted to dedicate a series to exploringsuch contested American holidays and what they can help us think about. Leadingup to this special post on that most conflicted of all our federal holidays!]

On one waymy thinking has significantly evolved in the last decade, and one thing I’dstill emphasize.

In all butone of the posts this week I started by asking you to check out a prior pieceof mine, and so it’s only fitting that in this weekend post I do the same. Backin October 2015 I wrote for myTalking Points Memo column about how we might reinvent Columbus Day, and I’dask you to check out that column if you would and then come on back here for acouple layers to where my thinking is nine years (!) after I wrote that.

Welcomeback! 2015 was right at the start of themovement to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and nineyears later I have to admit I am thoroughly convinced that such a move (whichhas officially taken place in anumber of communities) is the right one. As I hope has been clear throughoutthe week, and hell throughout this blog’s nearly 14 years, I believe we can andmust remember as much of our history as possible. But commemoration is a verydifferent thing (as MichaelKammen knew well), and given the countless impressive and inspiringAmericans on whom a collective holiday might focus, I just can’t justifydedicating one of them to someone who never set foot on the continent and whowas apretty thoroughly despicable dude to boot (getting to talk Columbus Day forJunior Scholastic magazine remains a career highlight). In the TPMcolumn I noted the turn of the 20th century reasonswhy Columbus Day became a thing (make sure to check out that great GuestPost on th subject from my friend Nancy Caronia), and those are certainly stillworth remembering as well; but a holiday commemorating Columbus is, to my 2024mind, a no-go.

Anotherpart of my proposed solution back in 2015 was to add commemorations of a pair ofother Spanish arrivals to the Americas, Bartoloméde las Casas y AlvarNuñez Cabeza de Vaca. While I’m not sure we should try to commemorate themat the same time as Indigenous Peoples Day—one collective holiday dedicatedentirely to Native American histories seems quite literally the least we coulddo—I remain dedicated to adding both of those figures to our collectivememories in any and all ways. While there are various reasons for thatcommitment, at the top of the list is that these two figures, in very distinctbut complementary ways, exemplify my conceptof cross-cultural transformation, of perspectives and identities that entirelyand inspiringly shifted when these individuals from a particular culturalbackground came into contact with other communities and cultures. Perhaps noindividual holiday could quite capture that complicated process—but perhaps onecould, because as I hope this whole series has illustrated holidays can be (andhave always been) whatever we want them to be. And if we were to commemorate transformativeAmerican stories, we couldn’t do much better than las Casas & de Vaca.

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

October 11, 2024: Contested Holidays: “The War on Christmas”

[Ahead of Columbus/IndigenousPeoples’ Day, I wanted to dedicate a series to exploring such contestedAmerican holidays and what they can help us think about. Leading up to aspecial post on that most conflicted of all our federal holidays!]

Threevoices who can together help us see through the “Waron Christmas” canard (which as of this writing DonaldTrump has recently resuscitated).

1)     StevenNissenbaum: That excellent hyperlinked book of Nissenbaum’s, The Battlefor Christmas: A Social and Cultural History of Our Most Cherished Holiday (1996),does a great deal of the work I was originally planning to do in this post,specifically in framing the fact that Christmas in America has always beencontested and even attacked, and indeed in places like Puritan New England was farmore so both of those things than it is in any aspect of our 21stcentury society. Moreover, Nissenbaum helps us understand that many of the elementsof the holiday we now too often take for granted (like the “fact” that it celebratesChrist and/or his birth) were likewise entirely contested throughout much ofAmerican history, indeed for far longer than they have been seen as settledparts of the holiday. Bottom line, if there’s any truth to the idea of a “Waron Christmas,” it’s a historical truth, not a contemporary one; feel free toshare that with your Fox News-watching relatives, and you’re welcome (fromNissenbaum and me).

2)     VaughnJoy: Among the many aspects of Joy’s excellent Film- and AmericanStudyingwork that I highlighted in that post, one of them in particular, her ComparativeAmerican Studies article on Miracle on34th Street, illustrates the ways in which she uses bothChristmas and cultural representations of it to make a number of thoughtful andsignificant analytical points. She does so precisely because, as she argues in thatarticle and a greatdeal of her other work as well, Christmas has always been one of the most contestedand evolving symbols of (among other things) American identity and ideals, ratherthan some fixed or consistent celebration that could reasonably come underattack. And as Joy’s work particularly exemplifies, those shifting andcompeting meanings have been frequently (if not indeed always) constructed andreconstructed through cultural works, adding one more layer to the fundamental sillinessof some overarching “Christmas” that could be warred upon.

3)     My Mom: That’s how a couple of the bestscholars of Christmas histories and culture can help us challenge the “War onChristmas” canard. But I’m not sure any challenge is more telling than areminder of what the holiday season meant in America just a few decades ago. MyMom has shared quite a bit with me about the experience of growing up Jewish in1950s and 60s America, and specifically about how openly and single-mindedlypublic schools celebrated Christmas, with nary the slightest reference tohanukkah or any other holiday or tradition (despite, again, the presence ofJewish kids like my Mom in those schools and classes). In those schools anderas, as I would argue for virtually all of our history (or at the very least allof our 20th century history), it was Christmas that waged war on fartoo many Americans—and if we’ve gotten slightly better at defending thoseindividuals and communities during the holiday season, that’s simply aninclusive way to live up to our ideals.

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

October 10, 2024: Contested Holidays: Thanksgiving/Day of Mourning

[Ahead of Columbus/IndigenousPeoples’ Day, I wanted to dedicate a series to exploring such contestedAmerican holidays and what they can help us think about. Leading up to aspecial post on that most conflicted of all our federal holidays!]

On twoways we can be thankful while mourning.

Gotta gofour for four with asking you to read other pieces at the start of this week’sposts: two years ago I wrote for my SaturdayEvening Post Considering History column on Wamsutta James and his lifelongefforts to reframe Thanksgiving as a National Day of Mourning. Once again I’llask you to check out that prior piece if you would, and then come on back forsome further thoughts on how we can put these two contrasting commemorations inconversation.

Welcomeback! I don’t want to minimize any of the specifics of the National Day ofMourning, which I think was and remains a vital addition to our collectivecalendar. But I do believe there’s value in an occasion which presents us withan opportunity to be thankful, and would say that the combination of these twocommemorations can add importantly to that perspective as well. For one thing,I’m hugely thankful for the activists who throughout our history have pushed usto better remember our hardest and most painful histories, a list that mostdefinitely includes countless indigenous activists, from WilliamApess and Zitkala-Ša to the AmericanIndian Movement and Wamsutta James and up to so many inour present moment. When I make the case, as I do frequently, that criticalpatriots embody the best of American ideals through their recognition of how we’vefar too often fallen short of them (and their concurrent desire to push uscloser to them), it’s precisely folks like these about whom I’m thinking, andremembering James on Thanksgiving would thus commemorate our best as well asrespect the legacy of his National Day of Mourning ideas.

That’s acollective point, and the more important of the two I’ll share here to be sure.But I have to add a more personal and I hope understandable complement: howthankful I am for the lifelong opportunity both to learn about such figures andcommunities and to do my part to help make them all more consistently and fullypart of our collective memories and conversations. I don’t want to pretend fora second that any aspect of my work equals or even parallels that of activistslike James—but the chance to help connect more of my fellow Americans to himand his voice and ideas and efforts and effects is not only not one I will evertake lightly, but also is genuinely one of the aspects of my work (in theclassroom, in writing and scholarship of all kinds, and in any and every otherway I can think of) for which I’m most thankful. I try to remember that as wellas Wamsutta James and the National Day of Mourning on Thanksgiving, and I hopeyou all will as well.

LastHolidayStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?